“Boston Tea Party” Needed, She Says; Cooking Up Scheme

by Alicia Hart

Daisy Harriman

Washington — (NEA) —
The days of crusading women suffragists are not yet dead. That is if
Daisy
Harriman has her way.

A tradition here in the capital, this grand old gal is outraged that the
citizens of Washington, both male and female, have no right to vote either in
local or national elections. So she’s waging a red hot no-holds campaign to
get Congress to rectify this situation.

If going to prison will help the cause, then Mrs. J. Borden Harriman is game.
In fact, she’s presently cooking up a scheme that could put her back in the
clink any one of these days.

Mrs. Harriman served as
U.S. Minister to
Norway during the critical years prior to World War Ⅱ. She is a distant
cousin of Gov. W. Averell
Harriman of New York.

After years of civic and social activity, political squabbles, hair raising
experiences and close friendships with the great and near great, she’s in no
mood to call it quits. A mere 84, she makes ridiculous the conventional idea
that old ladies should stick to their rocking chairs.

Wake Up People

“We’ve got to do something spectacular that will wake people up to the fact
that Washington is voteless.” exclaims Mrs. Harriman who is cochairman of the
Washington Home Rule Committee and a power behind the drive to give the
District of Columbia its own government. “It’s so hard to get anyone excited
over it. Why most people in the country don’t even realize we can’t cast a
ballot here.”

The best way to dramatize voteless Washington, Mrs. Harriman figures, is to
refuse to pay
D.C. taxes
until something is done. So far, she has persuaded about 10 persons to go
along with the plan. They’ll sign a paper notifying officials of their
position.

“We need another Boston Tea Party,” she says. “It’s the same situation — taxation
without representation. Washington is the only great capital in the
free world where the people have absolutely no say as to how their government
is run. It’s a disgrace.”

Such a skirmish with the law could put Mrs. Harriman and anyone else behind
bars. Some of her more cautious friends have advised against such a step.

“I’d be perfectly willing to go to prison,” she comments as if referring to a
coming engagement. “I think it would be fun.”

In 1937 she was appointed by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt as Minister to Norway. The second woman in
U.S. history to
take on such a diplomatic post, it seemed to be a harmless spot where a
female could hardly gum up international relations.

But Hitler changed that. When the Germans attacked Norway in
1940, she was on the spot, and her dispatch to
the State Department sounded the alarm. Then 70, she stuck out air raids
until finally forced to flee to Sweden with the Nazi armies close behind.

She has also been through plenty of political battles and is a staunch
Democrat ever since taking up the banner for Woodrow Wilson in
1912. Soon after his election, she was made the
only woman member of the Federal Industrial Relations Commission.

Perhaps Daisy Harriman’s Sunday evening suppers won her the greatest fame,
especially in Washgton circles. Here again, there were fireworks. New Dealers
and right wingers from the ranks of Congress, the newspaper business and
government were placed side by side at her table.

Then she’d throw out for conversation a sizzling topic of the day. When her
guests got too hot under the collar, she could always cool them off with one
sentence. It was: “Isn’t this all great fun?”

The District of Columbia finally got its own, locally-elected government in
1973, though it is subject to whatever arbitrary
mandates Congress decides to throw over it from time to time, and it has
turned out to be a particularly crappy government. The residents of the
district still have no full-fledged Congressional representation.

In 1990, the non-voting District delegate to
Congress, Walter E. Fauntroy…

Fauntroy… asked city residents to file federal tax returns but withhold
payment of federal taxes and place the money in an escrow account to be
established by a group called “Taxation Without Representation Committee.”

Fauntroy vowed to continue the protest until a
D.C.
statehood bill is passed by Congress. The bill, considered a long shot to
pass, would make the city a state and give city residents their first voting
representation in Congress — two senators and one member of the House.

“Like all Americans, the people of Washington,
D.C., are
not different when it comes to sharing the burden of taxation,” Fauntroy
said. “Indeed, district residents pay more taxes per capita than the
residents of every state in the union except one, Alaska.”

He said all records of tax returns and payments would be sealed, and he hopes
to get $1 million in unpaid taxes into the account.

Jan Eichhorn, a longtime statehood activist who plans to withhold her federal
tax payment, said the protest could affect the struggle for statehood.

“The only way we’re going to get statehood is the way we got home rule: by
appealing to the voters of other states,” said Eichhorn, a
D.C.
government employee. “If this is organized well, it can have an impact.”
Fauntroy, who for several years has waged an unsuccessful effort to achieve
statehood for the district, said he would like to see $1 million in withheld
tax payments made to the corporation. He first began planning the protest
late last year.

To preserve taxpayer confidentiality, data about individual contributions to
the fund would be sealed, Fauntroy said. He added that James M. Christian, a
lawyer with the firm of Laxalt and Washington, had offered legal assistance
to participants in the Fauntroy plan.

Fauntroy said the tax protest “will heighten the moral impropriety” of the
district not having statehood and “prick the conscience” of those in Congress
and other parts of the country who oppose statehood.

Here’s a graphic from the recently-launched tax resistance campaign in
northern Italy, from the right-wing “Forza Nuova”
party:

For more information on the topic or topics below (organized as “topic →
subtopic →
sub-subtopic”), click on any of the ♦ symbols to see other pages on this site that cover the topic. Or browse the site’s topic index at the “Outline” page.